Hire and Develop the Best

Leaders raise the performance bar with every hire and every promotion. They recognize exceptional talent and move those people across the organization. They develop leaders and take coaching seriously.

Back to the universal principles

Why it matters

What this principle is for.

The hiring bar is the culture. Lower it once because you need six people by year end, and you will spend years managing the damage. I would rather slip a date than put a weak person on a strong team. Interview until you are sure. Empty is better than wrong.

Hiring people who might be smarter than you is the job. You are not filling a seat. You are looking for someone who will get bored doing the same work and will raise the standard around them.

Hiring is not enough. If you are an individual, your career is yours. Take the learning. Demand stretch work. Do not wait to be developed. If you are a manager, developing people is the day job, not the leftover. When they get better, the product gets better.

Holding a star because they make your team look good helps your team and hurts the company. Moving them makes the company stronger, and it opens a stretch role behind them. Leaders who send strong people onward are doing this. Leaders who hoard them are not.

Calibration

Under, just right, over.

Look for a hire they walked away from, a person they developed and then let go, and a low performer they actually moved. "I care about people" is not this principle. Neither is hunting for a reason not to hire anyone, or filling a seat so a program can start.

Situation	Under	Just Right	Over
Two finalists	Chooses the finalist with the same background and the same way of thinking. The finalist who would do the job better does not get the offer.	Chooses the finalist who will do this role best, and says which parts of the work decided it.	Chooses the weaker finalist so the team will look more varied on paper.
A familiar candidate	Treats a shared background and the same skills as proof they can do the job. The interviews never test the work.	Tests the work. A shared background is not a reason to hire them, and it is not a reason to pass.	Rejects them for sharing that background, even though they are the best person for the role.
A gap in the first month	Waves off a real gap because the candidate will be easy to manage. The team finds the gap after the offer.	Names the gap, asks whether this person is still the best choice for the role, and hires only if the answer is yes.	Hires them with the gap because a target says the next person should change how the team looks. Other people then do the work the role was opened to do.
Who interviews the candidate	Asks only people who share the hiring manager's background, thinking style, and skills to do the interviews. Every vote repeats the same narrow judgment.	Asks people who can test the role, including someone whose skills differ, and still decides on who can do the job.	Picks interviewers so the panel will hit a target for who should be in the room. A strong candidate gets a no, and the work was never the question.
A referral from your own circle	Moves the referral ahead because they come from the same places and think the same way. Someone who might do the job better waits.	Runs the same bar as any other candidate. The referral gets the offer only if they are the best person for the role.	Sets aside a strong referral so the team will not look narrower, and offers the role to someone less able to do it.
The job as written	Writes the role as a copy of the manager: the same background and the same skills. People who could do the work better never match the posting.	Writes the work the role must do, then hires the best person who can do that work.	Writes the role as a slot in a target for how the team should look. The posting describes the look, not the work.
Interview debrief	Sits through the debrief and agrees with the loudest interviewer. Never says whether this person would be stronger than the people already on the team.	Compares the candidate, skill by skill, to people already doing the work. Votes no when the hire would only fill a seat, even if the team is tired of covering.	Treats every mixed signal as a no. Strong candidates stall, interviewers stop trusting the process, and the team keeps covering the open work.
A teammate asks to move internally	Changes the subject when they ask about other teams. Holds onto them because this quarter's plan needs them where they are.	Helps them find a role that uses what they already do well, then plans a handoff so current work does not fall over.	Walks them to the new team the same week to look generous. The remaining people inherit undocumented work and a hole in coverage.
Weekly one on one	Runs through tickets and deadlines. Growth never makes the agenda.	Spends part of the hour on one skill to practice this week and the rest on the work in front of them. The person leaves with a next step that fits the current load.	Turns the meeting into a weekly career workshop. Delivery slips, and the person spends more time being coached than doing the work.
A colleague refers a friend	Moves the friend to the front of the line and softens written feedback so the colleague is not embarrassed.	Runs the same loop and the same standard as any other candidate. Tells the colleague the outcome without dressing it up.	Adds extra interviews to prove there was no favoritism. The candidate takes another offer while the loop is still running.
Staffing a hard project	Gives the work to whoever has done it before. Everyone else stays in their lane.	Puts a less experienced person on it with enough cover that the customer still gets a solid result. Names what they should learn by Friday.	Hands them the critical path with no backup so they can grow. The date slips, and they spend the next month repairing trust.
Reviewing this week's resumes	Screens for keywords that match the people already on the team. Unusual backgrounds never get a loop.	Advances people who could do the work the team will need next year, even when their titles do not match. Passes on a comfortable lookalike who would only add a pair of hands.	Advances anyone who looks impressive on paper. Interviewers spend the week on people who cannot do the job, and the candidates who could are still waiting.
A new hire's first month	Hands them a laptop and the backlog. They copy whatever they see, including sloppy habits.	Gives them real work and a named person to learn from. Checks that they are picking up the standard, not just the tools.	Fills the calendar with shadowing and reading lists. They produce nothing, and the team still carries their load.
Who presents the work	Presents it themselves every time. The people who did the work stay unknown outside the team.	Lets the person who did the work present, and steps in only for gaps. Uses the room to coach without taking the credit.	Puts someone unready in front of a high-stakes audience with no rehearsal. Their reputation takes the hit, and the work looks weaker than it is.
A team like the manager	Builds a team with the same background, the same thinking style, and the same skills as the manager. The same blind spots show up in every review, and nobody in the room catches them.	Hires the best person for each role. The set of roles covers more than one background, style, and skill when that is what the outcome needs.	Sets a target for how the team should look and accepts a weaker hire to hit it. The team under-delivers because it was not built for the outcome.
The same miss again	Hires again from the same background and the same skills after the team misses the same kind of problem. The next person would have missed it too.	Names the judgment or the skill the team lacks, then hires the best person who can close that gap and still do the role.	Adds someone who changes how the team looks on paper and does not have the missing skill. The miss happens again.
One temperament in the room	Hires people who decide the way the manager decides. A bad call gets no pushback until a customer feels it.	Includes styles that challenge the default, because the outcome is better when the room is not one temperament.	Collects contrasting styles to hit a target for how the room looks. The meeting never reaches the decision the business needed.
The skill the work needs	Fills every seat with the skill the manager already has. Work that needs a different skill is done badly, or not done.	Looks at the outcome the team owes, then fills the missing skill with the best person who has it.	Gives up a needed skill to hit a mix on paper. The outcome slips, and the team does not call that a hiring miss.
The next three hires	Plans the next hires as more people the manager already trusts, which means people like the manager.	Plans each seat against the work the outcome needs. The person who gets the seat is the best one for that work, including when the work needs a background, a style, or a skill the team does not have.	Assigns the next three hires to a quota. Capable people are passed over when they miss the slot, and less capable people are hired when they fill it.
After the team misses	Blames the miss on not having enough people who already work the manager's way, and hires more of them.	Asks what the outcome needed that the team could not do, and whether the people in the seats could do the work.	Hires again to change how the team looks. The result does not improve, because the new person still cannot do the work.

Examples

What it looks like in the work.

Empty is better than wrong

You need six people by year end. A candidate is fine, not great. Hiring them so the initiative can start is under. I would rather miss the initiative. Weak hires hire more weak hires. Look for a time they held the seat open, and what they shipped (or slipped) because of it.

Export the star

Your best person has outgrown the team. Keeping them makes your metrics look good this year. Moving them makes the company stronger and opens a stretch role behind them. Tell me about the person you developed and then let go. If every star is still on your org chart, you are not doing this.

Hire someone who scares you

The right hire could do your job. That is uncomfortable. Hiring someone junior to take the work you do not like is under. Waiting for a mythical perfect candidate, or expecting a more junior person to already operate at your level, is over. Hire someone who could do your job.

In the role

Individual and manager.

Individual

You take your own development seriously. You ask for stretch work. You coach peers without being asked. In a hiring loop you will vote no when the person would not raise the bar, even if the team is tired of interviewing.

Manager

You treat coaching as the day job. You move low performers with speed and clarity. You export talent on purpose. You would rather slip a date than lower the bar, and you hire people who might make you look less like the smartest person in the room.

Go deeper

Questions that make the principle concrete.

When did you last walk away from a candidate because they would not raise the bar?
Who have you developed and then moved to another team, and what happened to both sides?
What did you do with the last person on your team who was below the bar?
When you hire, are you filling a seat or raising the standard for the people already there?
Who do you coach who does not report to you?
What stretch work did you give someone, and how did you follow up without taking the work back?
When did you hire someone who could do your job, and how did that change the team?
How do you keep a senior core so new hires have someone to learn from?
What hiring miss did you make, and what did you change about how you interview?
If you need the work done this quarter and the candidate is only fine, what do you do?

Sources and essays on this principle.

Hiring First. Everything Else Second.
Excellence starts and ends with hiring. Most leaders agree. Few behave like it.
kindel.com
The Most Dangerous Lie In Project Plans: "We'll Hire"
A plan that depends on people you have not hired is not a plan.
kindel.com
People Management Is Not a Hobby
Developing people is the day job, not the leftover after the product work.
kindel.com
Working Backwards, the book by Colin Bryar and Bill Carr
The Bar Raiser chapter. Every hire should raise the average of the team they join.
macmillan.com

Principles that sit next to this one.

Principles lean on each other, and some pull against each other on purpose (the tension is intentional). Here is how Hire and Develop the Best connects to the rest of the set.